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Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

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Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#41

Post by hnbad »

seibelj wrote: post #24
ybean wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is already biased, because you use Walmart as the other option. Walmart already came through and blew away the local mom and pop market in these rural areas. Are they more convenient than driving an hour to a walmart? probably. I've seen small family run stores go out of business specifically because they can't compete with a dollar general that opened a mile away. "Deeply beneficial" seems like a strong…

For anyone reading this thread who still has an open mind, I recommend this 2009 episode of the EconTalk podcast that talks about actually working at Walmart and how supposedly-great the "mom and pops" were before Walmart took over: https://www.econtalk.org/platt-on-working-at-wal-mart/ The truth about the mom and pops is that they had very limited selection, high prices, long delivery times, and often were owned by…

> often were owned by the local business man rather than a decentralized group of independent business owners

You imply this is undesirable. Care to elaborate? A large talking point during the protests last year was businesses in Black communities being owned by people outside those communities, or more often than not, by large corporations.

Or are you suggesting that a lot of the owners actually owned multiple such shops and that this isn't true for the shops that replaced them?

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#42

Post by ergot_vacation »

seibelj wrote: post #7

The gut-reaction is that this is some horrible thing rather than a scalable business model that provides low-cost goods to customers in rural areas that were previously underserved. My family in rural Oklahoma and Texas have to drive over an hour to Wal Mart, the dollar stores have a similar but curated subset of goods at a cheap price, and the distance is much closer. HN monoculture loves to crap all over things lik…

The difficulty is that it can be both. Dollar stores almost certainly do SOME kind of good, otherwise they wouldn't exist. Unlike SV startups, I doubt the companies behind them are interested in burning piles of money without turning a profit. They ARE turning a profit, which means people are coming it, which means people find the service offered attractive.

That said, people also find the service offered by drug dealers attractive. And yet if the number of crack dealers in your neighborhood explodes overnight, it's unlikely most people will see that as a positive development. A healthy neighborhood is not one riddled with drug pushers, and a healthy economy is not one riddled with dollar stores. There's nothing wrong with a few discount stores, in the same way there's nothing wrong with someone stopping at a fast food place every once in a while. But if you're eating every meal there, something isn't right.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#43

Post by [deleted] »

safog wrote: post #40
jcims wrote: post #16

It's not clear to me what the problem is that the article is outlining. The Dollar General near me has the exact same brands as you would find in any larger retail establishment, they just have found a way to stock the 80% that folks typically need. They are filling a niche between the gas station convenience store and traditional grocery/big box retail. They don't have a produce section, just a bit of fruit. Is that…

After a couple of levels of indirection, I think the whole argument hinges on one anecdote. It might indicate a general pattern, but no actual authoritative sources back it up. Original Article quotes "growing evidence suggests these stores are not merely a byproduct of economic distress. They’re a cause of it. In small towns and urban neighborhoods alike, dollar stores are triggering the closure of grocery stores, e…

[deleted]

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#44

Post by dcveloper »

Good. I've started purchasing Birthday cards here. I've noticed Birthday cards costing 4-6 dollars at grocery stores. They are 50 cents to a dollar at the Dollar Store. Between family birthdays and kid birthdays, I think I spend close to 100-150 dollars a year on birthday cards. That's expense is now down to 20 dollars from Dollar Store.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#45

Post by mithr »

Brings to mind Vimes' "'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness", from Terry Pratchett's Discworld:

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#46

Post by mnd999 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #2

Retail makes so little sense now for anything that isn’t very cheap. Otherwise you can just ship it from Amazon, Instacart, or a speciality store.

The natural conclusion of this is no retail at all, no malls and high streets reduced to cafes, hair salons and betting shops (where that’s legal). All retail goes through 2 or 3 big online suppliers with cavernous warehouses that deliver daily in vans or at a premium within the hours via bike or drone.

This sounds more dystopian than utopian to me.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#47

Post by blendergeek »

jcims wrote: post #16

It's not clear to me what the problem is that the article is outlining. The Dollar General near me has the exact same brands as you would find in any larger retail establishment, they just have found a way to stock the 80% that folks typically need. They are filling a niche between the gas station convenience store and traditional grocery/big box retail. They don't have a produce section, just a bit of fruit. Is that…

The real issue is that all value created by the likes of Dollar General leaves the community. If the owner of the store is in the community, those dollars will more likely be spent withing the community. The increased tax value on the owner's home will be in the community. With Dollar General, all of that leaves.

Nobody in a Dolllar General is making much more than the proprietors of the old local store were making. Yet, their prices are cheaper. Why? Because Dollar General is taking a cut.

This may seem better to the local community at first (lower prices means more money in their pockets) yet this money is leaving the community forever. With the local grocery store, money flowed in circles, now Dollar General is extracting what value is in the community until the community dies.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#48

Post by seibelj »

hnbad wrote: post #41
seibelj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone reading this thread who still has an open mind, I recommend this 2009 episode of the EconTalk podcast that talks about actually working at Walmart and how supposedly-great the "mom and pops" were before Walmart took over: https://www.econtalk.org/platt-on-working-at-wal-mart/ The truth about the mom and pops is that they had very limited selection, high prices, long delivery times, and often were owned by…

> often were owned by the local business man rather than a decentralized group of independent business owners You imply this is undesirable. Care to elaborate? A large talking point during the protests last year was businesses in Black communities being owned by people outside those communities, or more often than not, by large corporations. Or are you suggesting that a lot of the owners actually owned multiple such…

If the idea is that every mom and pop was ran by self-directed, profit-motivated independent business persons who captured more of the profit, this is not often the case - the employees of these stores made the same going labor rate of any retail employee, it was just a local business man who ran the businesses rather than a conglomerate. One benefit of a large corporation like Walmart is the share holders are far more distributed.

My general point is that this fantasy of a "mom and pop utopia" of small businesses that Walmart and similar destroyed is just that - a total fantasy. They were not a dream situation and they went away because they were not the best for consumers or their community, not because of some grand conspiracy.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#49

Post by MattGaiser »

ybean wrote: post #9
MattGaiser wrote: post #2

Retail makes so little sense now for anything that isn’t very cheap. Otherwise you can just ship it from Amazon, Instacart, or a speciality store.

That is an incredibly privileged response to something like this. No one who is living in poverty or near the edge of poverty can even consider the additional cost associated with shipping or delivery, let alone on a weekly basis for core staples. Reasonably priced fresh food access within walking distance should be a basic right. However, the people who need this most are those who are underserved.

But that’s my point. The case for retail increasingly only makes sense if a few extra dollars here and there matter to you and you need the savings it can provide.

So it makes sense that any increase in retail would be meant to serve that population.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#50

Post by lotsofpulp »

pasttense01 wrote: post #29
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #4

Good article and discussion about the economics of these "Leeches of the poor": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27650477 TLDR: The products in Dollar Stores aren't 'cheap' in the sense that they cost less than other stores per unit - its just that they're (mostly) packaged into smaller units that people living paycheck to paycheck can afford.

Note the other stores mentioned: Walmart, Target and Costco--all discount stores. When you compare prices to convenience stores or drug stores the Dollar Stores are much cheaper. And when you look at Walmart, Target and Costco remember time is money. And it takes significantly longer to shop at Walmart, Target and Costco (the long walks to and from your car, the long walk in the store itself, the waits at the cashier…

How often are people going to Walmart/Target/Costco that walking time is a material factor?

I make weekly Costco runs and my total time car door back to car door is 15 minutes or less. I just order for pickup at Target, but even if I had to find the item, I can just see what aisle the product is in in the app and grab it and go within 10 minutes easy.

On the other hand, Dollar Tree or Dollar General is probably only budgeting 1 person for the staff, maybe 2 and so there is at most 1 register open 90% of the time. So you have a high probability of spending minutes just waiting in the checkout line. At Walmart/Target/Costco, you have self checkout and at Costco you have super fast staff at checkout with many lines open such that the lines are always moving quickly.

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